supplied by the effusion of the Spirit of truth. The world, indeed, cannot receive this divine Person; because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but it is the peculiar characteristic of the true disciples of Christ, that they do know him; for he dwelleth with them, and shall be in them*. Accordingly, in due season, and pursuant to the declaration of Christ, the Holy Ghost descended upon the Apostles, and conferred upon them spiritual gifts both extraordinary and ordinary. By the reception of the former, they were specially qualified to discharge the duties of their important office, and were awfully and incontrovertibly accredited to every nation as the peculiar delegates of heaven: by the reception of the latter, they were eminently endowed with all the pure dispositions of a renewed heart, and were enabled to testify the reality of their internal change by an exact holiness of life and conversation.

Extraordinary gifts they received for the

* John xiv. 16.

benefit of the church: ordinary gifts they received for their own personal benefit. Extraordinary gifts were conferred upon a few only: of those ordinary gifts, without which no real sanctification can be attained, without which a man must labour under a physical incapacity of enjoying the kingdom of heaven, it is the privilege of every genuine Christian to be a partaker. They are ordinary, not as inferior in point of importance to the possessor (for in this respect they are superior); but as gifts ordinarily bestowed upon all the faithful, and not limited after an extraordinary manner to a few.

Since those miraculous powers, which were conferred upon the founders of the Christian church, were designed only for a special and determinate purpose; as that purpose was gradually accomplished, the powers were gradually withdrawn, until at length they entirely ceased. The religion of the Messiah, after the lapse of three centuries, obtained a firm establishment: princes became its nursing fathers: and they, who refused to yield to the voice of

reason and evidence, had no longer conviction forced upon them by a supernatural interference of heaven. Signs and wonders ceased to attend the preaching of the Gospel: yet the promise, that the Holy Spirit should abide for ever with the disciples of Christ, remained unbroken, and we trust will remain unbroken to the very end of time. Neither the sight of miracles, nor the ability of performing them, has simply and independently any effect upon the human heart. They may perhaps dreadfully convince the understanding: but God alone can convert the soul. The state of man by nature is precisely the same now, as it was in the days of the Apostles: consequently, if it were then necessary that the Holy Spirit should reprove the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment; it is no less necessary in the present age. The world, indeed, is called Christian: but practical infidelity still flourishes in all its baneful luxuriancy. It matters not what a man is denominated, so long as his heart is alienated from God: and a bare assent of his understanding will be of little

avail, if his life prove him to be the slave of Satan. On this account, the ordinary operations of the Spirit are continued, though the extraordinary ones have long been unknown in the church of Christ.

A state of nature is constantly opposed in Scripture to a state of grace. The first is the wretched inheritance bequeathed to us by our common progenitor Adam: the second is the free and unmerited gift of God the Father, purchased for us by God the Son, and conveyed to us by God the Holy Ghost. The whole, then, of the work, carried on in the soul of man by the third person of the blessed Trinity, may be briefly defined: A gradual restoration of that image of God, in the likeness of which Adam was created, and the lineaments of which were totally obliterated by sin. The work is begun, continued, and

*To discover wherein such image and likeness consisted, what better method can we take, than to inquire wherein consist that divine image and likeness, which, as the Scriptures of the New Testament inform us, were restored in human nature, through the redemption and grace of Christ, who was

perfected, by the Holy Spirit. He is equally the author and the finisher of our faith: and, without him, we can do no good thing. From the first faint motions of spiritual life to its final consummation in the realms of everlasting happiness, all the honour and all the glory of our growth in grace be ascribed unto him!

When the Almighty ceased from the work of creation, he pronounced all that he had made to be very good. The new world was as yet free, from the inroads of sin, and from

manifested for that purpose. The image restored was the image lost; and the image lost was that, in which Adam was created. The expressions, employed by the penmen of the New Testament, plainly point out to us this method of proceeding: Renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him: put on the new man, which after God is created

The divine image, then, is

in righteousness and true holiness. to be found in the understanding; and the will: in the understanding, which knows the truth; and in the will, which loves it. This divine image is restored in human nature by the word of Christ enlightening the understanding, and the grace of Christ rectifying the will. Bp. Horne's Sermons, vol. i. p. 20, 21, 22.